Displaying items by tag: Russia

Romania: The Romanian unit of Lafarge has appointed Sonia Artinian as its new country CEO. She is in charge of the French group's cement, aggregates and concrete business in Romania. Artinian replaces Philippe Questiaux, who had managed Lafarge's cement activity in Romania since 2002.

Russia: Vladimir Petrov has been appointed as General Director of Pikalevskiy Cement, a part of Russia's Eurocement Group.

Ukraine: The Balakleya-based Eurocement-Ukraine company dismissed its director general Demis Halchev on 31 January 2011 after a tenure of around three years in the post. According to a report, the position is now vacant.

Russia: Eurocement Group has announced plans to build a cement plant in the Samara Region in the Volga region. The groundbreaking ceremony took place on 19 January 2011.

The plant, which will have a dry-process kiln, will have a capacity of 2.4Mt/year. The facility will be located on a site of 40 hectares and its launch is scheduled for 2015. Eurocement plans to invest Euro395m in the project.

The announcement follows the start of another Eurocement plant in Spasskoe village, Blagodarnniy district, Stavropol Krai. Construction of this 1.3Mt/yr plant began in December 2011. Euro346m has been committed to this build.

Russia: Ciments Français has gone to court to keep a Euro50m advance payment from OAO Sibtsem Holding for Turkish cement assets that the latter company did not acquire.

Ciments Français filed a suit with the Russian supreme arbitration court on 20 December 2011 to recognise the ruling of the Istanbul arbitration court as of 7 December 2010. Under this ruling the French company does not have to return the advance payment to Siberian Cement for the acquisition of Turkish Set Group, which has four cement plants with a capacity 5Mt/yr. On 26 December 2011 the court accepted the suit for consideration.

In March 2008 Sibtsement announced that it would acquire Set Group from Ciments Français, having paid Euro377m and about 5% of its shares, estimated at Euro200m. The first instalment stood at Euro50m. However, the world financial crisis prevented the companies from closing the deal. In the autumn of 2008 the parties began discussing payment for the deal by instalments but they failed to reach an agreement.

In the summer of 2010 the arbitration court of the Kemerovo region in Russia confirmed that Ciments Français had to return the advance payment as the agreement was null and void. In early 2011 the Kemerovo court refused to confirm the Istanbul court ruling.

Russia: Danish cement plant supplier FLSmidth has won two recent orders to build cement plants in Russia. FLSmidth said it would build a complete cement plant for Kaluga Cement Plant LLC in the Kaluga province, 300km southwest of Moscow in a deal worth Euro150m. Last week, the company also announced a preliminary deal for a separate 8500t/day cement plant in Russia, which is expected to be worth over Euro100m. At nearly 3Mt/yr this kiln will be the largest in Europe.

FLSmidth's chief executive announced that Russia is now seen as the most promising market for such projects. "This confirms what we have long said. There is very big potential in Russia," said chief executive Jorgen Huno Rasmussen. "It is the most promising market we see at the moment."

Rasmussen also said that the big potential in Russia for cement plant sales stemmed from high economic growth, based largely on high energy prices and from the age of existing cement production capacity. "Around 85% of the existing cement capacity is outdated and needs to be replaced," Rasmussen said. The company is in contact with several other potential customers in Russia.

At present, BaselCement only has two operating facilities, one in Russia and the other in Kazakhstan. The company's plant in the Krasnoyarsk city of Achinsk produced 436,500t of cement in January to July 2011, up from 150,400t that it produced in the same period of 2010. BaselCement's plant in Kazakhstan produced 400,000t of cement in the whole of 2010.

The proposed deal could also include two cement plants with a combined annual production capacity of 3.5Mt/yr that are currently being built in the Ryazan and Novgorod regions. CRH has preliminarily estimated BaselCement's value at Euro550-600m (excluding its subsidiary BaselCement-Pikalyovo). BaselCement is forecast to have a net profit of Euro45.8m in 2011.

Russia: HeidelbergCement has officially opened its new plant TulaCement in the presence of numerous prestigious guests. The plant, which is located approximately 150km south of Moscow in the city of Novogurovsky, Tula region, has a cement production capacity of 2Mt/yr. Construction of the plant began in April 2009. The investment costs for the new plant, which employs around 400 people amounted to approximately Euro300m.

"We are very pleased that we are today able to inaugurate our state-of-the-art cement plant, TulaCement, which is one of the largest in Russia," explained Dr Bernd Scheifele, Chairman of the Managing Board. "In the future, the new plant will primarily supply the rapidly growing market in Greater Moscow with high-quality cement. We have thus reached another milestone in the expansion of our cement capacities in attractive growth regions and have increased our capacity in Russia to around 5Mt/yr."

The cement will be produced in a dry process in the highly-automated plant, which is equipped with environmentally-friendly technology. The entire production site including the quarry spans over 100 hectares. To ensure optimum logistics for delivery and cement shipments, HeidelbergCement has constructed several kilometres of road and railway lines. Four modern apartment buildings have been erected so that the employees can live on site.

"Russia is an attractive market for HeidelbergCement," added Dr Scheifele. "The demand for cement is rapidly increasing. It is anticipated that cement consumption will rise from 50Mt/yr in 2010 to around 70-90Mt/yr in the next 10 years."

HeidelbergCement has been active in Russia since 2001. Amongst other activities, the Group operates a cement plant near St. Petersburg and is the majority shareholder of a building materials company in Bashkortostan, one of the richest republics in Russia. The cement is imported to important growth regions via import terminals in Murmansk, Archangelsk and Kaliningrad.

Russia: Dmitry Lisenkov, Managing Director of Rusnano and Alex de Valukhoff, General Director of Lafarge in Russia have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum 2011. The MoU signifies the intention of the two parties to begin working together towards the development of innovative and sustainable construction materials designed to provide more value for customers across Russia.

"We are delighted to sign a strategic agreement with Rusnano," said de Valukhoff. "It illustrates our mutual will to collaborate with the aim to introduce joint plants producing high performance mineral additives and fillers. Fostering innovation in sustainable development projects and industry modernisation are amongst our company's key priorities."

"The modern construction industry faces a significant number of challenges, the first of which are energy efficiency, materials durability and environment safety," said Lisenkov. "Therefore innovation in technology for the construction materials production has transformed traditional materials such as cement, concrete and gypsum into more technological and functional ones. In this field, nanotechnology development enables to reach new levels of qualities. Taking into consideration Lafarge's global scientific and research expertise, we see a great prospects in the collaboration with Lafarge in the area of high technology materials production in Russia."